THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

RIVERSIDE 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT 


ESSAYS   IN   LENT 


BY 

HAMILTON  WRIGHT  MABIE 


NEW  YORK 

E.  P.  BUTTON  &  COMPANY 
681  FIFTH  AVENUE 


Copyright,  1915 
BY  THE  OUTLOOK  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

Copyright,  1919 
BT  E.  P.  DUTTON  &  COMPANY 


All  Rights  Reserved 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


PUBLISHER'S  NOTE 


This  series  of  beautiful 
little  essays  originally  ap- 
peared in  the  columns  of 
The  Outlook,  of  which  at 
that  time  (1915)  Mr.  Mabie 
was  one  of  the  editors.  They 
are  now  issued  in  book  form 
with  the  generous  consent 
of  the  proprietors  of  The 
Outlook. 


CONTENTS 


THE  BATTLE  OF  LIFE       .     .     .11 

THE  OLD  FIGHT 17 

THE  INWARD  PUNISHMENT   .     .  22 

THE  LATEST  TEMPTATION     .     .  28 

THE  DENIAL  OF  LIFE      ...  36 

THE  PRICE  OF  THE  SOUL       .     .  43 

GOOD  FRIDAY 51 

THE  VICTORY  .  59 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT 


THE  BATTLE  OF  LIFE 

|HE  Lenten  season  gains 
every  year  a  wider  ob- 
servance, not  only  be- 
cause many  churches  have  always 
observed  it,  but  also  because 
Christians  of  every  name  feel  the 
need  of  remembering  the  great 
experience  which  it  commemorates. 
No  recorded  experience  has  been 
studied  with  greater  seriousness  or 
deeper  reverence.  Those  to  whom 
Christ  is  the  Master  of  life  and 
those  to  whom  he  is  one  among 
11 


12  ESSAYS  IN  LENT 

several  great  religious  teachers  are 
agreed  that  the  forty  days  in  the 
wilderness  hold  a  unique  place  in 
the  history  of  the  human  spirit. 
There  have  been  many  interpreta- 
tions of  the  mysterious  happenings 
in  that  lonely  vigil,  and  its  sym- 
bolic meaning  has  grown  as  patient 
and  reverent  thought  has  striven 
to  penetrate  the  solitude  in  which 
the  man  who  called  himself  the 
Son  of  God  as  well  as  the  Son  of 
Man  went  through  a  struggle 
which  cleared  his  vision,  set  his  will 
immovably  to  fulfill  a  mission  of 
divine  helpfulness,  and  sent  him  in 
radiant  strength  on  the  road  to 
Calvary  and  to  the  morning  of  the 
resurrection.  Henceforth  there 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT  13 

was  for  him  perfect  union  with 
the  Father;  and  unclouded  faith 
in  the  heavenly  vision  kept  him 
courageous  amid  the  misery  of  the 
world,  and  tranquil  and  serene  in 
the  presence  of  death. 

In  that  lonely  struggle  the  one 
fact  that  stands  out  with  tragic 
and  splendid  distinctness  is  that 
Christ  was  fighting  for  his  soul. 
The  temptations  which  assail  men 
at  every  stage  of  the  journey  and 
make  life  a  long  battle  met  him 
on  the  very  threshold  and  chal- 
lenged him  at  the  very  start  to 
prove  his  worthiness  to  be  the 
redeemer  of  the  race.  He  who  was 
to  save  the  souls  of  men  must  first 
save  his  own  soul;  he  who  was  to 


14  ESSAYS  IN  LENT 

win  the  battle  of  life  for  others 
must  first  win  it  for  himself. 

It  was  a  clear  and  definite  issue 
that  was  fought  out  in  the  wilder- 
ness; it  has  been  fought  out  every 
day  since;  it  is  the  one  funda- 
mental issue  in  history.  It  is  often 
concealed  by  other  and  more 
obvious  issues ;  there  are  those  who 
deny  that  there  is  any  such  issue; 
what  is  called  civilization  seems  at 
times  to  have  disproved  its  exist- 
ence until  civilization  suddenly 
gives  way  and  men  find  themselves 
standing  on  the  edges  of  appalling 
abysses,  and  realize  that  under  the 
fairest  landscape  there  sleep  to- 
day, as  there  slept  a  thousand 
years  ago,  the  forces  that  rend  and 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT  15 

wreck  in  thirty  seconds  the  work 
of  thirty  centuries. 

Time  and  wealth  and  beauty 
and  the  growth  of  order  have 
changed  the  form  of  the  age-old 
and  unending  battle  which  all  men 
must  fight  to  keep  their  souls  alive. 
It  is  a  beautiful  world;  it  is 
crowded  with  absorbing  interests; 
it  is  a  better  world  than  it  used 
to  be  because  more  men  and 
women  are  fighting  the  battle  for 
their  souls;  in  the  future  it  will 
help  them  through  wiser  laws  and 
more  wholesome  conditions  to 
make  the  fight.  But  to  the  end 
of  the  world  every  man  and 
woman  must  fight  for  the  soul.  No 
change  in  institutions  and  laws,  no 


16  ESSAYS  IN  LENT 

refinement  of  ways  of  living,  no 
loveliness  which  art  can  bring  to 
humanity,  will  ever  win  the  battle 
once  for  all.  Every  age  must  fight 
for  its  soul  as  this  age  is  fighting 
to-day,  and  every  man  and  woman 
must  pass  through  that  struggle. 
It  is  inherent  in  the  very  nature 
of  a  stage  of  life  which,  through 
temptation  and  struggle,  offers  us 
the  strength  and  purity  which 
alone  make  God  and  heaven 
credible  and  real. 


II 

THE  OLD  FIGHT 

1OCIETY  has  become 
partially  Christianized; 
there  is  now  no  authority 
on  earth  which  can  compel  men  to 
choose  between  loyalty  to  their 
faith  and  death;  there  are  no 
longer  pagan  gods  to  whom  Chris- 
tians must  offer  sacrifices  or  go 
into  the  arena.  There  are  martyrs 
in  every  country  in  the  world,  but 
martyrdom  is  no  longer  drama- 
tized; the  victim  dies  after  long 
suffering  hidden  from  the  world. 

17 


18  ESSAYS  IN  LENT 

There  is  no  longer  a  place  of 
torment  luridly  pictured  and  of  a 
visible  and  haunting  terror;  and 
many  people  seem  to  think  that 
there  is  no  longer  any  hell,  and 
that  men  can  now  live  as  they 
choose,  with  no  thought  of  a 
broken  law,  a  righteous  judge,  and 
an  unescapable  penalty  impar- 
tially imposed  and  inevitably 
borne.  And  yet  what  men  call 
hell,  a  place  or  state  of  remorse, 
of  moral  degeneration,  of  agony 
of  mind  and  body,  was  never  so 
obvious  and  tragic  a  reality  as  to- 
day. It  is  no  longer  necessary  to 
open  Dante's  "Inferno"  to  find  it; 
it  is  only  necessary  to  unfold  the 
morning  newspaper.  Its  first 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT  19 

page  is  crowded  with  reports  of 
the  misery  which  follows  fast  and 
sure  on  every  violation  of  the  laws 
of  life.  Disease  and  death  wait, 
not  as  specters,  but  as  the  execu- 
tioners of  the  laws  of  science  on 
every  offender;  murder  in  every 
possible  form  is  so  familiar  to  the 
reporter  that  unless  circumstances 
or  persons  are  unusual  it  finds 
only  a  brief  space;  men  fleeing 
from  justice  and  women  from  dis- 
grace are  figures  so  familiar  that 
they  attract  scanty  attention;  loss 
of  integrity,  betrayal  of  honor, 
blighting  of  home,  loss  of  reputa- 
tion and  influence,  are  part  of  the 
history  of  the  day. 

And    with    whatever    bravado 


20  ESSAYS  IN  LENT 

men  and  women  face  these  penal- 
ties, sooner  or  later,  if  one  fol- 
lows their  careers,  the  inevitable 
tragedy  is  revealed.  Unless  and 
until  there  comes  a  place  and  an 
hour  of  repentance,  these  unhappy 
victims  of  passion,  violators  of 
honor,  betrayers  of  their  own 
souls,  are  in  a  hell  of  which  Dante 
drew  but  a  faint  picture. 

The  man  who  was  asked  if  he 
believed  in  hell,  and  answered  that 
he  was  in  it,  brought  out  clearly 
a  radical  change  of  thought.  The 
ignorant  or  literal-minded  once 
thought  of  hell  as  a  place  of  fiery 
torment  prepared  by  an  offended 
God  for  the  future  punishment  of 
evil-doers;  we  know  that  it  is  an 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT 


experience  of  suffering  involved  in 
the  very  structure  of  our  natures, 
which  begins  here  and  now,  and  is 
an  expression  of  divine  love.  The 
suffering  of  which  men  think  when 
they  think  of  hell  is  of  to-day;  it 
waits  for  no  future,  it  begins  now, 
and  it  will  continue  until  the 
offender  is  purified. 

The  issue  which  every  man  must 
face  is  precisely  what  it  was  when 
Christ  faced  it  in  the  wilderness: 
Shall  a  man  save  his  soul  ?  Words 
and  symbols  have  changed,  but  the 
battle  of  life  is  as  inevitable,  as 
fateful,  as  desperate,  as  it  was  a 
thousand  years  ago. 


Ill 

THE   INWARD  PUNISH- 
MENT 

|ORDS,  symbols,  and 
forms  of  thought  have 
changed;  but  the  truths 
and  facts  behind  them  remain 
unchanged.  A  flaming  hell  no 
longer  terrifies  men;  and  heaven, 
expressed  by  material  symbols,  no 
longer  inspires  them  to  holy  living. 
But  heaven  and  hell  are  all  the 
more  real  because  we  largely 
fashion  them  ourselves.  That  is  to 
say,  they  are  not  waiting  for  us, 

22 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT  23 

arbitrarily  created  as  places  of 
reward  or  punishment  according 
to  the  deeds  done  in  the  body; 
rather  we  have  been  so  fashioned 
that  by  the  play  of  the  laws  which 
God  has  written  in  our  natures  we 
not  only  decide  whither  we  shall 
go,  but  what  shall  await  us.  We 
no  longer  say  we  shall  be  im- 
mortal; we  know  that  we  are  im- 
mortal. Heaven  and  hell  are  not 
only  outside,  but  within  us ;  and  no 
man  can  go  to  either  destination 
until  he  has  made  himself  ready 
by  inward  preparation.  The  good 
man  who  accidentally  found  him- 
self in  hell  would  not  really  be 
there;  and  a  bad  man  who  might 
stray  into  heaven  would  find  it 


£4  ESSAYS  IN  LENT 

hell  by  sheer  force  of  contrast 
between  himself  and  his  surround- 
ings. 

The  moral  law  written  in  our 
natures  is  more  inescapable  and 
inexorable  than  when  it  was 
written  on  tables  of  stone.  No 
man  can  escape  because  he  keeps 
the  record  himself.  M.  Bergson's 
little  book  on  "Dreams"  is  full  of 
fearful  intimations  of  immortality. 
It  tells  us  that  nothing  we  have 
ever  said,  thought,  felt,  or  done  is 
forgotten;  that  we  carry  with  us 
an  ineffaceable  record  which  time 
cannot  blur  and  death  will  not 
erase.  Shakespeare  repeated  long 
ago  in  dramatic  form  what  the 
Bible  has  enforced  with  the  noblest 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT 


imagery  and  the  most  startling 
distinctness :  that  what  a  man  is  he 
has  made  himself;  that  his  past 
travels  with  him;  that,  while  his 
sins  may  be  forgotten,  their  effects 
cannot  be  eradicated  by  the  most 
bitter  and  searching  repentance. 
The  promise  of  Christ  is  that  he 
shall  deliver  us  from  our  sins,  not 
from  their  consequences. 

Many  people  in  the  world  do 
not  think  of  the  law  until  they  see 
the  constable  or  policeman.  They 
either  lack  imagination  or  the 
spiritual  sense  which  makes  a  man 
aware  that,  however  peaceful  the 
day  may  be  and  however  beautiful 
the  landscape,  there  are  laws 
written  in  the  world  about  him 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT 


which  are  full  of  tragic  possibilities 
if  he  disobeys. 

The  world  is  full  of  moral  dis- 
order because  man  is  free;  but 
there  is  no  moral  anarchy,  because 
no  lawbreaker  escapes.  The  most 
awful  quality  of  the  hell  of  which 
men  know  and  in  which  many  of 
them  live  to-day  is  its  disintegrat- 
ing, benumbing,  paralyzing  effect. 
Most  of  us  have  seen  some  man 
begin,  in  the  flush  of  a  vigorous 
manhood,  to  violate  the  law  of 
temperance;  we  have  seen  his  will 
slowly  yield,  his  habits  interfere 
with  his  efficiency,  his  ability 
decline,  the  shadow  creep  over  his 
home,  his  friends  regard  him  with 
ineffectual  sympathy,  physical  de- 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT  27 

generacy  set  in,  until  finally  he 
becomes  an  unorganized  mass  of 
matter  without  conscience  or  will 
or  capacity,  returning  to  the  ele- 
ments before  he  is  physically  dead. 
There  is  nothing  more  appalling 
or  revolting,  and  the  most  awful 
aspect  of  it  is  that  the  man  himself 
does  not  know  what  is  happening. 
He  grows  less  and  less  sensitive, 
and  the  more  repulsive  he  becomes 
the  less  he  realizes  the  death  in  life 
which  everyone  else  sees  in  him. 
He  lives  in  hell.  At  the  begin- 
ning that  fact  may  strike  home  to 
him,  but  as  time  goes  on  he  is  less 
and  less  conscious  that  he  is  a  lost 
soul. 


IV 

THE  LATEST  TEMPTA- 
TION 

[HE  sense  of  something 
sinister  and  malign  in 
the  world  seems  to  have 
come  to  men  as  soon  as  they  began 
to  see  the  world  and  to  think  about 
what  they  saw.  And  with  primi- 
tive men  to  think  of  an  evil 
influence  was  to  personify  it,  and 
so  the  devil  entered  into  human 
thought  and  has  remained  to  this 
day.  He  has  assumed  many  forms 
and  worn  many  costumes;  he  has 

28 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT  29 

been  brutal,  hideous,  repulsive, 
terrifying;  and  he  has  been 
urbane,  polished,  insinuating.  He 
has  been  an  incarnation  of  ugli- 
ness, foulness,  corruption;  and  he 
has  been  a  well-bred,  cultivated 
man  of  the  world.  He  has  been 
a  nightmare  of  terror;  a  Satan 
born  an  angel  and  led  astray  by 
ambition ;  and  he  has  been  Mephis- 
topheles,  a  fascinating  companion, 
offering  to  make  men  as  gods  in 
knowledge  and  freedom  to  will 
and  to  do  as  they  pleased. 

In  all  these  forms  the  spirit  of 
evil  has  borne  himself  according  to 
the  fashion  of  the  time;  and  has 
expressed  in  figure  and  bearing 
the  thought  of  the  age.  To  the 


30  ESSAYS  IN  LENT 

savage  as  well  as  to  those  who  have 
gone  a  part  of  the  way  toward 
civilization  he  has  been  a  hideous 
and  dreaded  enemy  to  be  resisted 
and  made  powerless  by  charms 
and  incantations;  in  the  Norse 
mythology  he  is  the  god  of  fire, 
disintegrating  and  destructive ; 
from  the  towers  of  Notre  Dame  he 
looks  down  on  Paris  with  a  sinister 
and  malign  sneer;  in  Marlowe's 
"Faustus"  he  is  a  melodramatic 
devil,  crude,  vulgar,  and  without 
disguise;  in  "Paradise  Lost"  he  is 
a  great  spirit  fallen  from  heaven 
and  clothed  with  a  certain  tragic 
dignity;  in  Goethe's  masterpiece 
he  is  a  specious,  insinuating  temp- 
ter, an  actor  in  the  drama  of  life 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT  31 

whose  part  is  to  suggest  a  greater 
freedom  to  men  and  to  promise 
that  which  life  cannot  give — 
supreme  and  abiding  satisfaction 
in  power,  knowledge,  and  pleasure 
secured  without  discipline  and 
without  the  restraint  of  law. 

The  devil,  in  a  word,  has  ceased 
to  wear  the  face  of  a  demon  and 
the  garb  of  an  outlaw;  he  has 
become  respectable;  he  knows  the 
moral  and  social  conventions,  and, 
so  long  as  it  serves  his  purposes, 
observes  them;  he  sometimes  goes 
to  church;  he  no  longer  shudders 
behind  his  mask  when  the  cross 
confronts  him,  nor  does  he  shrink 
from  the  test  of  holy  water.  He 
is  no  longer  repulsive  to  the  eye, 


32  ESSAYS  IN  LENT 

but  he  is  more  malignant  and 
hideous  spiritually  than  was  the 
devil  that  tempted  our  ancestors; 
he  no  longer  wears  his  nature  in 
his  face  and  proclaims  his  calling 
by  his  dress,  and  he  is  therefore 
more  dangerous.  To  the  earlier 
generations  he  was  an  open  foe; 
to  us  he  is  a  secret  enemy;  he  has 
always  been  the  father  of  lies,  but 
to-day  he  wears  the  air  of  truth. 

"Ye  shall  be  as  gods,  kno wing- 
good  and  evil,"  is  his  age-old 
promise;  to-day  he  says,  "Ye  are 
gods  and  your  will  is  law,  for  ye 
are  beyond  good  and  evil."  Lib- 
erty, the  right  to  live  freely  and 
boldly,  to  pluck  the  fruit  of  the 
tree  of  knowledge  and  disregard 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT  33 

the  rules  of  the  garden  as  out- 
grown restrictions  laid  on  children, 
are  his  lures.  "Be  yourself  at  all 
costs,"  says  the  Superman,  who  is 
the  latest  incarnation  of  the  evil 
spirit.  "If  you  have  an  impulse, 
follow  it;  it  is  the  law  of  your 
nature,  and  there  is  no  other  law." 

"If  you  want  power  or  wealth, 
take  it  by  fair  means  or  foul;  to 
the  strong  there  is  no  right  or 
wrong — all  things  are  yours  to  use 
as  you  choose.  If  others  stand  in 
your  way,  push  them  aside  or  beat 
them  down;  all  things  are  yours 
because  you  are  strong." 

"Your  passions  are  strong; 
gratify  them;  you  have  a  right  to 
the  full  and  free  expression  of 


34  ESSAYS  IN  LENT 

your  nature;  marriage  is  a  conces- 
sion to  artificial  conventions;  you 
have  attained  freedom.  Cast  all 
restraint  aside.  If  society  is 
thrown  into  confusion  and  children 
are  blighted  by  divorce,  and 
impurity  poisons  social  life  at  the 
fountain,  do  not  hesitate  to  live 
your  own  life;  you  have  a  right  to 
happiness.  Take  it." 

So  the  devil  of  evil  talks  to  his 
victims  to-day,  profaning  the 
great  words  freedom,  love,  and 
life,  and  making  them  mere 
synonyms  for  abject  bondage, 
lust,  and  hard,  brutal  selfishness; 
and  the  misery,  disillusion,  vul- 
garity, and  tragedy  that  are  the 
harvest  of  his  lies  are  written  ID 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT  35 

every  newspaper.  "There  is  no 
battle  of  life,"  he  says,  as  he  be- 
trays to  dishonor  and  spiritual 
shame  and  death  all  those  who 
believe  him. 


THE  DENIAL  OF  LIFE 

IT  has  often  been  said  that 
the  supreme  issue  in  life 
is  the  existence  of  God. 
The  real  battle  is  the  battle 
between  faith  and  atheism.  No 
man  escapes  this  struggle;  no  man 
evades  this  issue.  At  bottom  it  is 
not  a  matter  of  confessions  and 
creeds;  it  is  a  matter  of  the  whole 
bent  and  drift  of  a  man's  life. 
There  are  atheists  who  affirm  their 
faith  in  words,  and  there  are 
believers  who  deny  in  words  and 

86 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT 


believe  profoundly  in  spirit  and 
deed.  The  possibility  of  sin  is 
involved  in  all  moral  life ;  wherever 
character  is  possible  sin  is  also 
possible;  wherever  there  is  free- 
dom every  man  must  choose 
between  atheism  and  faith.  "The 
chance  to  sin  is  wrapped  up  in  the 
very  fact  that  we  are  men.  We 
could  not  have  the  lofty  hopes  of 
heaven  without  having,  too,  the 
haunting  fear  of  hell,"  said 
Phillips  Brooks  in  a  notable 
sermon.  "And  here,"  he  added,  "is 
the  only  real  light  we  get  upon  the 
problem  of  evil.  It  is  not  con- 
ceivable that  man  should  have  the 
chance  of  being  good  without  the 
other  chance  of  being  evil." 


38  ESSAYS  IN  LENT 

No  man  can  escape  the  pos- 
sibility of  sinning  until  he  escapes 
from  life  itself.  But  this  pos- 
sibility is  not  the  evidence  of  the 
corruption  of  his  nature;  it  is  the 
price  he  pays  for  being  a  man  and 
not  an  automaton,  a  mechanism 
without  volition,  imagination,  the 
sublime  capacity  for  faith,  love, 
sacrifice. 

Life  is  a  great  adventure  of  the 
spirit,  and  there  can  be  no  adven- 
ture without  danger;  "our,  sins  axe 
born  deep  in  the  bosom  of  our 
chances."  Here  we  come  face  to 
face  with  the  most  terrible  aspect 
of  sin;  all  imagery  of  the  spirit  of 
evil  is  external  and  crude  in  the 
presence  of  the  truth  that  it  is  the 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT 


denial  of  God,  the  betrayal  of  the 
soul.  As  a  father  suffers  with  the 
son  who  has  committed  a  crime 
and  shares  in  spirit  his  shame  and 
punishment,  so  God  suffers  for  the 
sins  of  the  world.  The  supreme 
agony  of  the  cross  was  not  pain 
of  body  but  anguish  of  soul  that 
men  should  strike  down  the  hands 
that  held  out  to  them  purity,  free- 
dom, love,  and  peace,  and  choose 
hatred,  corruption,  and  strife  in 
their  place. 

The  boy  who  breaks  the  law  of 
the  school  thinks  he  is  asserting  his 
freedom  and  defeating  arbitrary 
authority,  and  does  not  know  that 
he  is  cheating  himself.  The  dis- 
cipline which  he  tries  to  evade  was 


40  ESSAYS  IN  LENT 

not  devised  for  the  school;  it 
embodies  the  larger  experience  of 
older  men  eager  to  fit  him  for 
tasks  and  opportunities  which  he 
neither  foresees  nor  understands. 
Sin  is  always  denial,  not  only  of 
God,  but  of  our  divinest  possibili- 
ties; in  disobedience  of  the  laws  of 
God  we  bury  our  freedom  instead 
of  asserting  it,  narrow  life  instead 
of  broadening  it,  and  cheat  our- 
selves instead  of  evading  God. 

For  sin  is  not  so  much  a  defiance 
of  God  as  a  denial  of  our  own 
souls;  it  is  not  so  much  a  violation 
of  law  as  it  is  a  betrayal  of  our- 
selves. Every  newspaper  confirms 
the  truth  of  the  awful  doom,  "The 
soul  that  sins,  it  shall  die;"  but  it 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT  41 

is  not  death  by  a  process  of  law: 
it  is  suicide.  That  death  is  often 
so  gradual  that  those  to  whom  it 
is  coming  are  unaware  of  it. 
Every  denial  of  life,  which  is  part 
of  every  denial  of  God,  involves 
a  lowering  of  the  standards,  a 
blurring  of  the  lines  between  right 
and  wrong,  a  coarsening  of  the 
nature,  a  deadening  of  the  finer 
sensibilities,  a  blighting  of  that 
purity  of  heart  which  is  the  posses- 
sion of  those  who  see  God.  It  is 
one  of  the  tragedies  of  an  age  of 
publicity  that  the  violators  of  the 
higher  standards,  who  defend 
themselves  and  others  like  them  in 
the  newspapers,  do  not  realize  how 
strikingly  they  confirm  the  sanctity 


42  ESSAYS  IN  LENT 

of  the  broken  law  by  their  uncon- 
scious revelation  of  the  havoc 
already  wrought  in  their  own 
natures. 


VI 
THE  PRICE  OF  THE  SOUL 

!!J]  HE  health  of  society  is 
being  more  rigorously 
guarded  than  ever  be- 
fore. As  fast  as  science  discovers 
the  sources  of  disease  she  lays 
upon  us  the  duty  of  removing 
them.  Drainage,  sanitation,  pure 
water  and  milk,  good  food,  are  no 
longer  matters  of  choice;  they  are 
matters  of  necessity.  Public  health 
is  a  public  duty;  an  epidemic  of 
typhoid  fever  is  a  disgrace  to  a 

43 


44  ESSAYS  IN  LENT 

community;  it  is  an  evidence  of 
criminal  ignorance  or  criminal 
carelessness.  The  time  is  coming 
when  death  as  the  result  of  laxity 
of  supervision  or  indifference  will 
involve  a  penalty  on  the  offending 
community.  Health  is  an  achieve- 
ment; it  can  be  secured  and  pre- 
served only  by  ceaseless  vigilance. 
Society  can  exist  only  by  sus- 
tained exertion  of  body,  mind,  and 
soul;  the  life  of  men  in  the  world 
depends  on  sleepless  fidelity  and 
effort.  Play  is  as  much  a  part  of 
life  as  work,  but  play  is  a  refuge 
from  work,  a  relaxation  from  the 
strain  of  attention  it  involves. 
The  race  will  never  be  able  to 
retire  from  activity  and  live  on  its 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT  45 

accumulated  capital.  The  condi- 
tions of  work  will  probably  become 
easier;  it  is  certain  that  they  will 
be  made  to  conform  to  a  keener 
sense  of  justice.  They  will  secure 
wider  leisure,  but  they  will  never 
make  idleness  possible.  If  society 
ever  attempts  to  sit  with  folded 
hands  and  give  itself  up  to 
pleasure  on  the  fortune  be- 
queathed to  it  by  its  vigorous  and 
tireless  ancestors,  it  will  go  into 
bankruptcy  of  character  and 
estate. 

No  business  can  be  so  solidly 
founded,  so  wisely  organized,  that 
it  will  go  on  its  successful  way  by 
its  own  momentum;  it  must  be 
served  by  fresh  ability,  managed 


46  ESSAYS  IN  LENT 

with  ever-renewed  skill,  or  it  will 
be  overtaken  by  disaster. 

The  Church  cannot  thrive  on 
the  traditions  of  a  great  past, 
preserve  the  reverence  of  the 
world  by  recalling  and  repeating 
the  names  of  the  saints,  or  serve 
the  twentieth  century  by  using 
slavishly  the  words  and  methods 
of  the  apostolic  age.  It  must 
understand  the  conditions  and 
temper  of  the  men  and  women  of 
to-day,  it  must  have  the  consecra- 
tion of  saintly  lives  in  this 
generation,  it  must  renew  its  youth 
in  fresh  vows  and  modern  forms 
of  activity.  In  every  art  sub- 
sidence of  the  creative  spirit 
follows  fast  on  loss  of  present 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT  47 

courage,  faith,  and  confidence;  the 
spirit  of  the  masters  lives,  not  in 
the  copyists  whose  easels  are  set 
up  in  every  art  gallery,  but  in  the 
works  that  throb  with  the  vitality 
of  to-day  and  are  beautiful  with 
the  light  of  this  morning. 

We  are  finding  out  in  this 
country  that  democracy  is  not  an 
end  in  itself  but  a  method  which 
demands  more  work  and  thought" 
and  devotion  from  more  people 
than  any  other  form  of  govern- 
ment. A  perfect  system  of 
administration  of  public  interests 
directed  by  weak,  incompetent, 
and  corrupt  men  would  fail  as 
disastrously  as  the  most  irrespon- 
sible oligarchy.  In  the  whole 


48  ESSAYS  IN  LENT 

world  nothing  will  do  its  work 
without  constant  oversight  ex- 
cept some  kinds  of  automatic 
machinery;  and  machinery  wears 
out  and  must  be  renewed.  Vigi- 
lance is  the  price,  not  only  of 
progress  in  society,  but  of  health 
and  safety.  Men  must  not  only 
guard  but  renew  their  possessions. 
A  man's  character  is  determined 
by  the  habit  he  establishes  of 
choosing  the  good  or  the  evil 
thing;  it  is  at  stake  every  day;  it 
must  be  reinforced  every  hour.  In 
a  weak  moment,  or  a  passing  mood 
to  which  he  surrenders  his  will, 
he  may  wreck  it;  the  battle  must 
begin  again  every  morning,  and 
ends  only  when  night  falls.  How- 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT  49 

ever  we  may  explain  it,  we  cannot 
shut  our  eyes  to  the  downward 
drift  in  society;  a  drift  which  can 
be  overcome  only  by  resolute  and 
sustained  effort.  The  moment  this 
effort  is  relaxed  moral  standards 
become  blurred,  men  begin  to 
degenerate,  communities  begin  to 
decay. 

For  society  as  for  the  in- 
dividual, moral  disease  and  death 
follow  fast  every  relaxation  of 
moral  effort.  Society  must  fight 
hourly  for  its  life,  and  for  every 
man  and  woman  the  same  struggle 
is  appointed.  The  soldier  who 
sleeps  on  sentry  duty  is  a  traitor, 
however  patriotic  his  intentions 
may  be;  the  best  purpose  in  the 


50  ESSAYS  IN  LENT 

world  will  not  help  him  when  the 
line  he  was  set  to  guard  is 
broken  and  the  enemy  has  pressed 
through;  he  must  not  only  mean 
well,  he  must  keep  awake. 

A  soul  is  a  priceless  possession; 
no  present  standards  of  measure- 
ment can  give  us  any  real  sense 
of  its  intrinsic  value ;  it  can  be  kept 
in  safety  only  by  tireless  vigilance. 


VII 
GOOD  FRIDAY 

|  HE  tragedies  of  life  are 
not  sickness  and  death; 
these  are  its  passing 
shadows,  its  sorrows  by  the  way, 
grievously  heavy  at  the  moment, 
but  neither  disintegrating  nor 
weakening.  The  death  which 
follows  an  act  of  sacrifice,  of 
courage,  of  faith,  opens  a  door 
through  which  a  great  light  shines ; 
it  may  bring  great  sadness;  it 
cannot  bring  the  sense  of  futility 
which  strikes  all  meaning  out  of 
si 


52  ESSAYS  IN  LENT 

life,  or  the  sense  of  the  victory  of 
evil  which  shrouds  it  in  the  gloom 
of  eternal  orphanage.  Lincoln's 
death  at  the  moment  of  emergence 
from  that  long  anguish  of  soul 
was  unspeakably  sad ;  but  the  hour 
of  his  going  was  the  beginning  of 
a  revelation  of  his  spirit  and 
service  which  is  the  most  priceless 
possession  of  this  Nation.  When 
a  man's  life  opens  the  door  of 
hope  for  all  time  to  come  and 
lights  the  mysterious  path  of  life 
as  with  a  great  torch,  the  sadness 
is  for  the  hour,  and  the  strengthen- 
ing of  faith  in  service  and  love  is 
a  permanent  addition  to  the  wealth 
of  humanity. 

That   wealth   is   spiritual;   men 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT  53 

have  tried  again  and  again  to  live 
by  bread  alone  and  have  gone 
near  to  starvation,  and  then  the 
bread  has  mercifully  been  taken 
from  them  and  they  have  heard 
again  the  word  of  God  and  health 
and  sanity  have  come  back  to 
them.  There  is  no  life-giving  and 
life-sustaining  power  in  wealth, 
comfort,  ease;  if  these  things  are 
rightly  used,  they  set  men  free  for 
high  endeavors  and  they  make 
splendid  service  possible;  but  they 
cannot  feed  the  spirit,  and  to  try 
to  live  upon  them  is  to  starve.  The 
events  that  strike  our  mortality 
are  infinitely  sad ;  but  the  tragedies 
of  life  are  those  events  that  strike 
our  immortality,  that  destroy 


54  ESSAYS  IN  LENT 

faith,  weaken  hope,  blur  the  vision, 
and  devitalize  the  will.  The  man 
who  accidentally  kills  his  fellow 
may  bring  grief  and  anguish  to 
many;  but  the  man  who  violates 
a  sacred  trust,  breaks  a  holy  vow, 
uses  a  good  reputation  to  hide  an 
evil  life,  strikes  at  the  souls  of  his 
fellows. 

There  are  many  kinds  of  sad- 
ness in  life,  but  the  tragedies  are 
one  and  all  rooted  in  the  immorali- 
ties of  the  world.  The  hurricane 
and  earthquake  destroy  the  work 
of  generations  in  a  moment  and 
bring  widespread  misery  and 
death  in  their  train;  but  they  open 
the  heart  of  the  world,  and 
sympathy  and  help  flow  like  a 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT  55 

fertilizing  tide  over  the  devasta- 
tion. Strength  does  not  fail,  hope 
does  not  die,  the  flame  of  courage 
does  not  sink  in  the  ashes  of  a  final 
despair.  Men  begin  at  once  to 
plan,  to  work,  to  look  ahead  to 
other  homes  and  harvests;  the 
foundations  on  which  life  rests 
have  not  been  destroyed. 

The  real  possession  of  the  race 
is  neither  wealth  nor  safety;  it  is 
faith  in  God.  While  that  remains 
no  catastrophe  is  final  or  fatal; 
when  that  goes,  no  prosperity  has 
any  value,  sacrifice  is  futile,  love 
is  a  mockery,  life  is  a  lie.  Then 
the  ultimate  wisdom  shrinks  into 
the  appalling  words,  "Let  us  eat 
and  drink,  for  to-morrow  we  die." 


56  ESSAYS  IN  LENT 

It  is  easy  to  blur  the  edges  of 
sin,  and  many  men  and  women  are 
deceiving  themselves  with  the  idea 
that  divine  laws,  like  human  laws, 
can  be  evaded.  They  forget  that 
divine  laws  are  automatic;  they 
are  not  imposed  from  without,  but 
are  wrought  into  our  natures. 
They  are  so  much  a  part  of  us 
that  they  need  no  external  author- 
ity to  enforce  the  penalties  of 
disobedience.  They  can  be  neither 
evaded  nor  blurred.  The  identi- 
fication of  sin  with  death  would 
seem  incredible  if  it  rested  solely 
on  the  authority  of  an  oldfashioned 
book  like  the  Bible;  but  it  is  the 
most  modern  fact  reported  by  the 
daily  newspapers.  They  repeat  it 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT  57 

day  after  day  with  pitiful  reitera- 
tion. 

The  tragedy  is  played  by  new 
actors,  with  variation  of  incident, 
but  always  with  the  same  denoue- 
ment. First  a  faint  blurring  of 
the  standards,  followed  by  a  little 
lowering  of  tone  hardly  percep- 
tible for  a  time.  Then  a  dead- 
ening of  moral  sensitiveness,  a 
fading  of  the  vision  of  an  ordered 
and  noble  world;  a  coarsening  of 
taste,  a  loss  of  spiritual  refine- 
ment, a  vulgarization  of  the  whole 
nature;  then  a  growing  skepticism 
of  the  presence  of  God  in  the 
world,  of  the  reality  of  the  soul, 
and  of  the  distinction  between 
right  and  wrong.  Then  indiffer- 


58  ESSAYS  IN  LENT 

ence  to  moral  law,  the  craving  for 
physical  excitement  and  diversion, 
the  loss  of  modesty  and  shame. 

These  are  they  who  weaken  the 
hope  of  the  world,  blight  its 
promise,  and  destroy  its  capital  of 
purity  and  strength.  Their  fall  is 
the  tragedy  of  the  world;  there  is 
no  other  tragedy,  for  misfortune 
and  calamity  hurt  the  body,  but 
they  who  violate  the  laws  of  life 
harm  the  soul.  They  crucify  the 
Christ  again. 


VIII 

EASTER    MORNING:    THE 
VICTORY 

|  HE  temptation  in  the 
desert  came  at  the  begin- 
ning of  Christ's  ministry, 
the  opening  of  the  tomb  in  the 
garden  at  the  end;  many  months 
of  teaching,  healing,  lonely  fellow- 
ship with  those  who  walked  with 
him  and  yet  were  separated  from 
him  by  a  chasm  of  misunder- 
standing, lay  between  the  hour  of 
struggle  in  the  solitude  and  the 
hour  of  victory  in  the  garden;  but 
one  followed  the  other  as  in- 

59 


60  ESSAYS  IN  LENT 

evitably  as  the  reaping  follows  the 
sowing.  The  resurrection  was 
predicted  by  the  rejection  of  evil; 
when  Christ  came  back  from  his 
vigil  in  the  desert,  he  had  already 
conquered  sin  and  death. 

In  the  struggle  through  which 
he  had  passed  the  mortal  nature 
had  fought  for  supremacy  with 
the  immortal  nature,  the  body  had 
striven  with  the  spirit,  and  the 
body  had  been  defeated.  Immor- 
tality triumphed  over  mortality  as 
certainly  in  the  desert  as  on  the 
morning  of  the  resurrection.  The 
fight  with  death  was  won  at  the 
beginning,  not  at  the  end,  of  his 
career.  If  his  followers  had 
achieved  at  that  moment  the  gift 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT  61 

of  vision  Which  came  to  them  later, 
they  would  have  seen  him  trans- 
figured and  in  companionship  with 
the  saints  of  their  nation  when  he 
came  to  them  from  the  mysterious 
and  lonely  struggle  in  the  desert. 
Henceforth  his  life  moved  like  a 
beam  of  light  through  the  darkness 
and  confusion  of  the  world.  There 
was  no  uncertainty  in  that  brief 
and  crowded  career;  there  was 
great  sorrow,  the  awful  burden  of 
the  sin  of  the  world  was  laid  on 
that  stainless  and  loving  soul,  lone- 
liness enfolded  him  like  the  air  he 
breathed,  he  was  sometimes  almost 
overborne  by  weariness,  hours  of 
anguish  awaited  for  him  not  only 
in  the  garden  of  Gethsemane  and 


62  ESSAYS  IN  LENT 

on  Calvary  but  in  many  an  un- 
recorded place  by  the  way;  but 
there  was  no  faltering,  no  hesita- 
tion, no  groping  for  the  path 
through  the  shadows  of  misunder- 
standing and  the  darkness  of 
death.  The  battle  was  won  once 
for  all  in  the  desert;  the  spirit 
triumphed;  sin  and  death  were 
banished  from  that  victorious 
career.  When  Christ  came  forth 
from  the  desert  to  take  up  the 
work  which  he  was  sent  into  the 
world  to  accomplish,  immortality 
had  already  taken  the  sting  from 
death  and  victory  from  the  grave. 
Those  who  loved  him  were  to 
see  him  radiantly  alive  on  Easter 
morning,  for  he  was  to  bring  life 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT  63 

and  immortality  to  light,  and  the 
brightness  that  streamed  from  the 
empty  tomb  has  transformed  the 
graveyards  in  which  they  who  are 
sown  in  weakness  shall  be  raised 
in  power;  but  it  is  the  spirit,  not 
the  body,  which  is  immortal,  and 
spiritual  things  must  be  spiritually 
discerned.  The  evidence  of  im- 
mortality is  wrought  into  the  very 
structure  of  our  natures.  If  they 
who  resist  evil  rise  not  from  the 
dead,  to  recall  the  Apostle  of  the 
resurrection,  then  are  they  of  all 
men  most  miserable;  for  their 
victory  is  futile  and  barren.  The 
victory  of  the  body  brings  its 
rewards  in  physical  instincts  fol- 
lowed to  their  end,  physical  desires 


64  ESSAYS  IN  LENT 

gratified,  passion  laid  to  rest  by 
free  expression,  the  love  of 
pleasure  satisfied.  These  are  all 
perishable  rewards,  for  the  body  is 
perishable;  but  they  are  real  and 
tangible.  The  man  who  yields  to 
the  temptations  of  the  body  gets 
what  he  pays  for;  and  the  physical 
life  fulfills  itself  and  sinks  at  last 
like  a  flame  which,  in  consuming 
the  fuel  that  feeds  it,  accomplishes 
its  purpose. 

But  the  triumphs  of  the  spirit 
are  futile  and  empty  if  it  does  not 
fulfill  itself  in  activities  for  which 
there  is  neither  time  nor  room  here. 
If  the  discipline  of  sorrow  and 
pain  and  weariness  do  nothing 
more  than  train  to  purity,  obedi- 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT  65 

ence,  and  unselfishness  a  spirit 
which  is  never  to  give  these  divine 
qualities  free  scope  in  conditions 
that  foster  and  aid  them,  then  life 
is  as  meaningless  and  futile  as 
education  would  be  if  it  prepared 
us  for  tasks,  duties,  and  achieve- 
ments which  had  no  existence.  To 
impose  on  children  the  long  and 
arduous  discipline  of  school,  col- 
lege, and  university,  and  tell  them 
at  the  end  that  there  is  no  room, 
place,  or  time  to  use  that  which 
they  had  patiently  gained  through 
long  years,  would  be  the  last 
sinister  irony  of  a  super-deity  who 
was  a  god  without  divinity. 

The  unescapable  tests  to  which 
all  men  are  subjected,  the  struggle 


66  ESSAYS  IN  LENT 

to  keep  the  soul  alive,  the  daily 
assault  of  temptation,  the  moral 
rigor  of  life,  are  the  premonitions 
of  the  splendid  opportunity  of  the 
spirit ;  as  the  hard  lessons,  the  rules 
and  work  of  the  schoolroom  are 
premonitions  of  the  life  which  is  to 
open  wide  to  training,  talent,  and 
character. 

Every  temptation  resisted 
strengthens  and  invigorates  the 
spirit,  and  by  the  very  vitality 
which  it  feeds  and  deepens  makes 
immortality  the  more  inevitable. 
Every  victory  of  the  body  over  the 
spirit  takes  something  from  the 
life  of  the  spirit,  and  blurs  the 
great  vision  of  completed  strength 
for  growth  and  peace  and  love 


ESSAYS  IN  LENT  67 

which  we  call  heaven;  every  vic- 
tory of  the  spirit  over  the  body 
makes  that  vision  more  real  and 
clear. 

The  open  door  of  the  empty 
tomb  is  a  symbol  of  that  escape 
from  sin  and  death,  that  present 
entrance  into  life  eternal,  which 
makes  every  pure  and  noble  life 
an  assurance  of  immortality. 
There  are  those  about  us  whose 
lives  exhale  a  sweetness  not  of  this 
world,  and  whose  spirits  have  no 
kinship  with  death.  In  them  the 
immortal  has  subdued  the  mortal, 
and  they  have  already  entered  into 
the  peace  and  rest  that  are  the 
fruits  of  the  final  victory. 

THE   END 


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